


there's power in the words you whisper

by BeluKertasOrang



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: BUT BITCH I'M TRYING, F/M, I cried four times writing this, I will be writing it myself, I'm not good at chess but I'm good at suffering, I've spent too many hours of my life watching this show, Mutual Pining, My First Work in This Fandom, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, References to Depression, References to Drugs, Sharing a Bed, There's gonna be romance, and crying, but we all love some good angst right?, due to no one giving me the angst I deeply crave, god made a mistake when he gave me free will, graphic descriptions of emotions, haha i don't know how to tag, my idiots can't talk about their feelings your honor, sharing a braincell, there's also mentions of alcoholism, this could be solved with some therapy but meh, this is just angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 09:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30087129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeluKertasOrang/pseuds/BeluKertasOrang
Summary: It’s a weird thing, conquering everything you wanted and then be left with the consequences of it: she’s never felt this empty before.Beth’s back in Lexington.
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Comments: 12
Kudos: 41





	there's power in the words you whisper

**Author's Note:**

> hi! this is my first fic in almost 4 years so I'm really nervous about it :) but I had to do it! 
> 
> anyways, this wouldn't be possible without the help of [thisismetrying](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisismetrying/pseuds/thisismetrying), [paperclipbitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch) and [marmotts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmotts/pseuds/marmotts).  
> you guys are amazing. thank you so much for guiding me during this fever induced dream.

It’s been raining for two days now, and she hasn’t showered in eight.

Beth thinks about the pills more than she thinks of the alcohol. She misses the numbness, not the sickness; being able to pass out in command, not feeling as if her insides are burning and her head is exploding. _Being sober is hell_ , she thinks, not for the first time in the last hours. Jolene has tried to help her, telling her about this coworker who used to be an addict and then just _fucking stopped being an addict_ and she’s sure the bitch is lying to her sister.

She wishes she could stop all together like the bitch.

It’s been raining for four days now, and she changed her pajamas yesterday. She put her clothes in the trash can after getting soaked trying to save her flowers by putting them in pots (they have been dead for almost two weeks, but Beth had _hope_ ).

In retrospective, she kinda _stopped_ all together when she went to Moscow; how the fuck did she do it, she has no clue, but don’t be fooled, she was high on adrenaline and anticipation.

And then winning (she wishes there was a way to turn winning into a pill or capture its essence inside a bottle).

Beth believes that if she had lost then she would have made it back to Lexington the same way Alma did: charged to the hotel and probably rotten. But then again, Townes was there, and then Benny and Harry and the twins and Wexler and Levertov and _she can’t die because what would they do with her rotten and tax-free corpse?_

She came back alive, of course, because she won.

It’s been raining for five days now; she needs to go to the grocery store but she doesn’t have a car and never in her entire life has it rained like this.

She also ran out of eggs yesterday and that’s basically everything she eats (apart from pre-made dinners) so she calls Harry.

Beth knows she smells, she’s totally aware that she looks like her biological mother at her lowest (second lowest, but still). Yet, she _is_ washing her teeth, and in her books that’s a win. Beth doesn’t need Harry thinking she’s finally gone entirely mad; when he saw her hitting rock bottom, she looked _divine_ , always the fashionista, but this is a whole new level of messed up and she doesn’t want to deal with that having an audience.

Also, she’s not sure what _a whole new level of messed up_ means and is too scared to find out.

It’s only when she picks up the phone to ring at his place at 6 am that she notices how her voice is raspy and slightly broken; Beth hasn’t talked with anyone, not even herself, in almost two weeks. If Harry notices, he doesn’t show and cheerfully agrees on dropping some food for her during his lunch break. She’s so glad he’ll be in a rush and won’t try to come in, she cries for twenty minutes.

However, when lunch hour arrives, she wraps herself in one of Alma’s robes, puts on a hat and a scarf and pretends to have the flu. Harry is a functional adult, he’s wearing a big rain coat, carries an umbrella and has doubled bagged the food so nothing arrives wet, even when he came by car. For a split second it seems like he wants to come in but then notices her clothes and face and decides against it, asking if she’s okay and needs anything else.

Beth shakes her head. “It’s just a cold or maybe the flu, but I’ll be fine”. She knows he won’t offer to bring her medicine, so he just gives her a small smile and leaves.

She actually laughs when she notices he drew little smiley faces in every egg she ordered. Then cries for another ten minutes when she breaks the first egg to make an omelet. 

It’s been raining for six days when she realizes that she hasn’t played chess (not even in her ceiling) since she came back from Moscow.

Withdrawal sucks the life out of her till the point of no return al least five times per day. She gags, and shakes, and sweats, and craves, and then lies numb in her bed waiting for it to come back. When it doesn’t, she sits on the floor of the living room and tries to think about what’s next. Beth wants to be World Champion by the time she’s 25, but at the moment she’s not sure she wants to be alive that long. She wants to go with Harry to visit the twins and just feel loved and wanted (in completely platonic ways). Sometimes she wonders if that need has anything to do with both her mothers dying or both her fathers leaving, but she doesn’t want to go down that rabbit hole. And therapy is too expensive, even for her.

Instead, Beth goes outside, just to her backyard because she doesn’t want her neighbors thinking she’s a lost cause, and lets she pouring rain wash away her sobs and her sins. She stays there for what feels like hours, standing in a pond barefoot, shaking and probably catching an actual cold, hands behind her neck and then around her torso, but doesn’t have the strength to go inside. Its grounding, Beth thinks, to feel the heavy rain against her face and listen to the distant thunder slowly approaching her.

When her hands are numb and her teeth are chattering so badly her jaw hurts, she regretfully makes her way back to the kitchen and catches her reflection on the toaster: sunken eyes and blue lips matching her pajamas. A voice inside her head scolds her, “You’re soaking yourself to death, Harmon”, and she wishes she could punch that chess rat right in the gut. Beth opts for standing in front of the radiator until she can feel her cheeks again and then falls sleep on her couch.

Before drifting off, Beth thinks about how much she wants to call Benny and ask him if she’s allowed to call him again, just for him to tell her she’s already calling.

It’s been raining for seven days and Beth is sure the world is ending because its not normal it rains like this in the middle of fucking May (or maybe it is, she doesn’t know that much about weather).

Beth doesn’t let herself think about Benny that much because she doesn’t like to feel guilty. Yet, she went to sleep thinking about him and she woke up with his name on her lips. Drinking milk straight from the bottle, she decides to think about the other guys she woke up thinking about in the past (leaving Cleo purposefully outside of her train of thoughts).

She doesn’t care about Tim, if she’s being honest. In her mind, he’s only a dick with some pot attached; he represents how awkward and needy she was as a teenager. She was relieved when he left in the morning, one of the first examples she experienced of avoiding consequences. 

Then, when Beth thought she was in love ( _in love_ , she laughs) with Townes, it was a childish feeling. He was handsome and smart and she wanted to be mature and treated like an adult. Thinking back, Beth knows it was a teenage crush and she’s so glad Roger interrupted them all those years ago, because now she has Townes in her life as a friend, a really close friend, and that’s all she wants from him.

And Harry… he wasn’t a drunken mistake, she knows that, because she kept him around during the hangovers as well, but Beth was grieving and he was there and kissed her, and what was she supposed to do? Tell him to leave so she can go back to the house that became a home and now is flooded by memories of the second mother that died next to her? Nu-uh. But she regrets the way things went down though, because Harry has such a pure and soft heart and all she wanted to do when he left was crushing it and feed it to the wolves so both of them can suffer together.

Benny is a completely different story, but she refuses to think about him.

It’s been raining for eight days when Beth decides that the _don’t call me anymore_ threat is no longer up because he _called_ her three weeks ago, and she’s not a coward.

Well, she’s not a coward most of the time because she sits for five hours before taking the phone and dealing the one number she knows by heart. He doesn’t pick up the first time but Beth has made up her mind, and he answers with a tired “What do you want?” after three rings the second time she tries. Just then she realizes it’s two in the morning, and Beth wants to say something among the lines of “You know what I want, Watts” or “I’m pretty sure I’m about to kill myself”, but what comes out is a mix between a sob and a gasp. Suddenly Benny’s awake and asking “Beth? What’s happening?” but she _doesn’t know what’s happening_ so she disconnects the phone and cries herself to sleep.

It’s been raining for nine days when Beth connects her phone again.

She feels restless the next morning, and the mere thought of going out of bed is sickening, and she’s not sure if its withdrawal but she feels like throwing up, so she does. Taking a look at herself in the mirror Beth feels nothing but horrified, so she leaves the bathroom and goes straight to the kitchen to see if she can come up with a new way of cooking eggs and forgetting how her hair matches a rat’s nest. As a second thought, Beth plugs the phone back on and it rings almost immediately, startling her. Her _hello_ is interrupted by Benny’s breathless _I’ve been calling_ _every fifteen minutes_ and she sinks down the wall to try to come up with a plausible excuse. It never comes.

“The lights went out, it’s been raining a lot” she tries at last, cracking her knuckles with the phone between her shoulder and ear. “I didn’t mean to scare you”.

Beth listens to Benny groan on the other end of the phone, probably passing his fingers through his hair, and she feels like crying once more. Then he’s speaking, but it takes a moment for Beth to register what he’s saying.

“… and then you wouldn’t answer, and I couldn’t stop thinking ab-” he stops midsentence, groans again and says in a very retrained voice “Don’t scare me like that ever again, Harmon”.

She tries to put herself in Benny’s position, picking up the phone in the middle of the night, listening to a ghost have a three second meltdown and then be left with that sound, repeating on an endless loop. The guilt Beth’s been nurturing since Paris threatens to make her puke again, and she thinks back to her breakfast going cold in the kitchen counter. She sighs.

“What’s happening, kid?” he says after a minute of awkward silence.

It takes her a few breaths to get the words out. “I think something is wrong with me” she mumbles, trying to crack a stubborn knuckle.

“Should I call an ambulance?” he tries to joke, but it’s mostly true concern hidden with a poor attempt of humor.

“I think you should” Beth replies in the same fashion, and she hears him taking in a sharp breath. Maybe not in the same fashion then (her voice is still broken).

Benny’s response comes demanding “What have you done?” and then panicked “Are you hurt? I’m calling Harry, hang on”.

“Don’t!” Beth curses herself, reading the interaction from his point of view, _again_. “I’m not hurt, I swear, I was trying to be funny but-” a shaking breath “this isn’t working” she finishes.

“Fuck” he says, but it sounds relieved. Then, slowly, as if he’s talking to a wild beast who needs taming (Beth thinks back to the condition of her hair and admits he might be) he murmurs “Beth, you need to tell me what’s happening because-” he goes silent and Beth checks to see if the phone is unplugged again. It’s not. In the tiniest voice he continues “-because I’m two seconds away from going to Lexington and finding out myself”.

“That would be nice” is all she manages to say because, seriously, _what’s happening?_ And what is she supposed to say to _that_?

At the end, it doesn’t matter because he replies with a quick “I’ll be there by sunset, please don’t do anything stupid” at which she answers with a desperate “Don’t tell anyone!” and then he’s gone.

 _Well_ , Beth thinks, after watching her toes for what feels like hours, _that went well._

However, she decides to go back to bed and screams with her face against a pillow until her throat burns.

It’s been raining for nine days and Beth dreams about ambulances.

**Author's Note:**

> Beth's addictions, withdrawal and overall mental health were poorly aborded during the show (don't get me wrong, I love TQG with my whole heart, but you know what I mean) so I decided to fix it myself :)


End file.
